Book XI, 354

One enquired as follows about the soul from Nicostratus, that second Aristotle, that equal of Plato, the straw-splitter of the loftiest philosophy. “How should we describe the soul, as mortal or rather immortal? Must we call it a body or incorporeal? Is it to be classed among intelligible or apprehensible things, or is it both?” But he perused again his books of metaphysic and Aristotle’s work on the Soul, and having renewed his acquaintance with Plato’s sublimity in the Phaedo, armed himself from every source with the complete truth. Then, wrapping his cloak about him and stroking down the end of his beard, he gave utterance to the solution: “If the soul has in truth any nature (for even that I don’t know) it is in any case either mortal or immortal, either of a solid nature or immaterial ; but when you have passed over Acheron, . there you shall learn the precise truth like Plato. Or, if you will, imitate the boy Cleombrotus of Ambracia, and let your body drop from the roof. Then you would at once recognise what you are, being without a body, and with nothing left you but the thing you are enquiring into.”